This is a great story. Chris, inspired by a book he was reading, reached out on a whim to a Harvard astrophysics researcher, kicking off a collaboration and side project eventually leading to the discovery of two new planets outside our solar system. In our conversation, we walk through the entire process Chris followed to find these two exoplanets, including how he researched the domain as an outsider, how he sourced and processed his dataset, and how he built and evolved his models. Finally, we discuss the results of his project and his plans for future work in this area.

This podcast is being published in parallel with Google’s release of the source code and data that Chris developed and used, which we’ll link to below, so if what you hear inspires you to dig into this area, you’ve got a nice head start. This was a really interesting conversation, and I’m excited to share it with you!

Conference Update

Be sure to check out some of the great names that will be at the AI Conference in New York, Apr 29–May 2, where you’ll join the leading minds in AI, Peter Norvig, George Church, Olga Russakovsky, Manuela Veloso, and Zoubin Ghahramani. Explore AI’s latest developments, separate what’s hype and what’s really game-changing, and learn how to apply AI in your organization right now. Save 20% on most passes with discount code PCTWIML. Early price ends February 2!